By Marianne Goodland
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
(TNS)
A Denver District Court judge ruled Wednesday that the measure to change Colorado’s flat rate into a graduated income tax can stay on the November ballot, though the legal challenge is far from over.
Judge Heidi Kutcher ruled that the plaintiff, Michael A. Hancock of Centennial, did not meet his burden of proof to establish that failure of petition entities to fully register their paid circulators is a violation of law. The same is true for Hancock’s claim that a violation of law occurred when valid signatures were submitted by paid circulators who did not complete the Secretary of State’s training, the judge ruled.
The litigation is not over: The plaintiff’s counsel said he plans to appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court on an expedited process, given that the election is now just 13 days away.
Voters will decide in about two weeks whether to fundamentally change how Colorado taxes individual and corporate income by replacing its flat rate with a graduated system in order to collect roughly $2 billion more under one proposal. A competing would cap the rate at 4.4%, which is the current flat tax levied on individuals and corporations.
Under Amendment 87, individuals and businesses earning less than $500,000 would see their tax liability decrease by a few hundred dollars up to $325 per taxpayer. Those earning $25,000, for example, would see their tax liability shrink by $175. At the $550,000 threshold, a taxpayer would pay $25,375—$1,175 more. Meanwhile, the amount owed by taxpayers who earn $2 million would jump from to $143,925 from $88,000—exactly $55,925 more.
If the two competing measures both passed, the prevailing sentiment at the state Capitol is that whichever garners more votes will become the controlling law, though one possibility is that the courts would ultimately have to decide which measure to implement.
The lawsuit was filed in September, with Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Schreck representing Hancock. Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado Jason Dunn was the lead attorney for the plaintiff in a hearing held Monday in Denver District Court.
“We are elated and relieved by the judge’s decision,” said Chris deGruy Kennedy, co-chair of the Protect Colorado’s Future coalition, which is backing Amendment 87. “But we also know that these anonymous, dark-money donors will continue to throw every roadblock they can contrive to keep voters from deciding on this question of tax fairness.”
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Secretary of State Jena Griswold, also a defendant, said, “We appreciate the Court’s careful consideration of this matter and look forward to voters making their voices heard on this question. My office will continue to uphold Colorado law and ensure Coloradans can cast their vote on any measure that is qualified to the ballot.”
The crux of the lawsuit has to do with when paid petition circulators must be registered with the Secretary of State’s office and whether they’ve completed all the required training and affiliations with the election office.
It’s part of a five-step process, as explained by deGruy Kennedy. The first step is licensing the petition entity, followed by the entity being affiliated with one or more ballot measures. Then comes training, registering individual circulators and affiliating those circulators with the ballot measure.
The petition entity hired by the coalition only worked on Initiative No. 195, which became Amendment 87, de Gruy Kennedy said.
A brief submitted by Hancock on Oct. 14 insisted that several of the paid circulators did not register with the election office—and that “rules must be followed.”
“Colorado statutes and rules adopted by the Secretary of State in the last two years require that anyone paid to circulate signature petitions must be registered with the Secretary’s office for that initiative before they collect signatures. But 22% of the paid circulators for Proposed Initiative 2025—2026 #195 were never registered to do so. That is undisputed,” the brief said.
That’s not true, according to both de Gruy Kennedy and the Secretary of State’s Office.
Plaintiff: 11,000-plus signatures should be thrown out
Hancock’s brief asserted that the signatures collected by those 69 paid circulators—about 11,216—must be invalidated.
That number matters a lot.
The Secretary of State’s certification process declared the petitions had submitted 130,938 valid signatures, just slightly above the 124,238 required under the rules. Removing 11,000 signatures would, in effect, nullify the ballot measure.
The number of paid circulators who weren’t registered wasn’t the 69 claimed by Hancock—based on testimony Monday as well as via a declaration filed by Caleb Thornton, who is in charge of rulemaking for the Secretary of State’s Office.
Thornton had analyzed the claim that 69 circulators weren’t registered.
In his Oct. 14 declaration, Thornton said one circulator never submitted signatures, while the names of two others were misspelled by the plaintiff and they had completed the process. The registration of two others, including state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, D-Glenwood Springs, was incorrectly rejected by the Secretary of State’s Office, he said.
Another 31 had not been formally associated with the ballot measure by the petition entity and they submitted 7,408 signatures. And 29 circulators had no record as a registered petition circulator and no record of attempting to register as a petition circulator. Those circulators collected 2,609 signatures.
The argument by the measure’s organizers was that they were in substantial compliance, completing four of the five-step process for all but those 31 circulators out of more than 300 who worked on the petitions, both paid and volunteer.
There’s nothing in the law that says what happens when a step is missed, deGruy Kennedy insisted, adding that makes the appropriate remedy a fine or revocation of the petition entity’s license.
Kutcher, the judge, agreed.
Armed with new information about the number of circulators, the plaintiff’s attorneys changed their arguments for Monday’s hearing, the judge noted in her ruling. They withdrew their protest about lack of training for 66 of the 69 paid circulators but maintained that three paid circulators did not complete the training and that the 69 original paid circulators were not fully registered with the Secretary of State’s Office.
That constitutes a violation of law that should render any signatures submitted by those circulators as void, they insisted.
The plaintiff also asserted the failure to comply with the paid circulator registration process should have been part of the state election office’s validation process.
In testimony Monday, the Secretary of State’s Office said once a petition is turned in, it does not verify if paid circulators completed the process.
State law, according to Kutcher, does not address how failures to register paid circulators impact the validity of the signature collection process.
Kutcher’s ruling said state law, specifically CRS 1-40-135, “may be the sole remedy for addressing fraud or violations by Petition Entities, but it does not prevent a Protest to invalidate signatures. The question then becomes when Petition Entities do not comply with the Secretary’s regulations regarding registration, is that a basis for invalidating Petition Sections.”
Most notably, the ruling said state law and the Secretary of State’s rule 15.1.4 can “identify when the Secretary may invalidate signatures. Those reasons do not include invalidating otherwise valid signatures of registered electors because a Paid Circulator was not fully registered with the Secretary through a licensed petition entity,” Kutcher wrote.
“To invalidate a signature that is otherwise a valid Registered Elector’s signature because a paid circulator was not registered by a licensed Petition Entity or registered for a specific initiative would place significant restrictions on the Registered Electors’ right to participate in the initiative process,” she wrote.
Photo credit: Jeffrey Beall/Wikimedia Commons
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© 2026 The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.). Visit www.gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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